of internal policy which England had ever witnessed. It had labour sd, too, as previous parliaments had laboured, in devising remedies for social evils, after the prescriptive fashion of believing that laws could regulate prices, and that industry was to be benefited by enacting how manufacturers should tan leather or dye cloth, and what trades should be carried on in particular towns.

Queen Catherine died on the 7th of January, 1536. In her last hours she wrote a brief letter to Henry; chiefly to commend her daughter and her maids to his respect. Its opening sentence was one of solemn warning: "The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought to prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever; for which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many troubles. But I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise."

In the February following, Anne Boleyn had a premature delivery of a dead son. There was again disappointment to the king. His desire for an heir had become a passion. However justly we may blame the weakness of Anne for permitting the royal lover to be for years at her feet, while the question of the divorce was depending, we see, after the marriage, a frank and affectionate helpmate,-cheerful, gay; kind to her dependents; earnest in looking at the Scriptures as the rule of life; of unbounded charity. But she had bitter enemies. She was regarded as a heretic; and no suspicion could more ensure her the king's hatred than this,-n -nor the hatred of her uncle, the duke of Norfolk. The moment that it was perceived that the king was cooling upon his "most entirely beloved wife," as he had so often proclaimed her to be, there were agents ready to procure her ruin. The Society of which Loyola was the founder was not regularly organised till 1540; but his most energetic proselytes were earlier in full activity. With such secret agents about Henry, to hint that the want of an heir was an intimation of Heaven's displeasure at his second marriage, as of the first; with Gardiner abroad, to suggest that the emperor would never acknowledge the lawfulness of the issue of Queen Anne; with one in the court, young and fair, with whom the king had evidently a perfect understanding; and with Anne herself, having habitually an unconstrained demeanor to those about her, which might be construed into levity and even guilt, there could be no great difficulty in setting "the sordid slave" Audley, and "the base and profligate" Rich-(we use Lord Campbell's designations of these men)-to manufacture evidence, and to ground indictments for treason upon a statute that admitted of no such construction. There were secret investigations going on in April. On the 24th notice had been issued for the assembling of a special commission. The usual festivities took place at Greenwich on the 1st of May; and Henry sat by the side of Anne as they gazed upon the tournament, at which Anne's brother, lord Rochford, was the challenger of sir Henry Norris. To the real incidents of that day, which we may sufficiently trace from authentic relations, report added that Anne dropped a handkerchief which Norris picked up, and that Henry's jealousy was thus stung into madness. The king suddenly departed, and rode hastily to London. One who was a servant of sir Henry Norris says, "Upon May-day, Mr. Norris justed;

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ANNE BOLEYN COMMITTED TO THE TOWER. and, after justing, the king rode suddenly to Westminster; and all the way, as I heard say, had Mr. Norris in examination, and promised him his pardon in case he would utter the truth. But whatsoever could be said or done, Mr. Norris would confess nothing to the king; whereupon he was sent to the Tower in the morning.* It appears that the queen was examined by some of the council at Greenwich. They accompanied her to the Tower on the 2nd. According to Kingston, the queen kept harping upon Norris, and speaking of him as if he had made advances to her, for which she had reproved him, and said she could undo him if she would. She had been persuaded that Norris had spoken lightly of her, but Norris had said to her almoner that he would swear she was a good woman. This talk does not appear to have chiefly taken place before the constable of the Tower, but was reported to him by one Mistress Cosyn, who was appointed to lie with the queen on her pallet,-Lady Boleyn, her uncle's wife and her domestic enemy, being also there. From time to time her mind is dwelling upon the threats and insinuations of Norfolk and the king's council, as these treacherous women question her; and she wanders in her distracted talk from one to the other of those who had been mentioned as being im plicated in her dishonour. There is nothing which indicates anything more than the affection which these men naturally bore to a kind and perhaps too condescending mistress, in any one of her rambling and indiscreet sen. tences. When the queen first came into the Tower, she made an effort to touch the heart of the king; and she said to Kingston, "I shall desire you to bear a letter from me to Master Secretary." A copy of a letter to the king, with the words written upon it, "From the Lady in the Tower," is to be seen amongst the Cotton MSS. in the British Museum. It has been much injured by fire; but the entire letter, with which this burnt MS. corresponds in the parts untouched, is printed in Lord Herbert's history, and by Burnet, who refers to the MS. in a marginal note. In this beautiful composition Anne most solemnly asserts her innocence, and begs in touching terms for "a lawful" and "an open trial." She concludes with a request "that myself may only bear the burthen of your grace's displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen who, as I understand, are likewise in straight imprisonment for my sake. If I ever have found favour in your sight; if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears; then let me obtain this request." The day after Anne had been imprisoned in the Tower, Cran mer wrote to Henry expressing his unwillingness to believe in the queen's uilt. "For I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her, which maketh me to think that she should not be culpable. And again, I think your highness would not have gone so far, except she had surely been culpable. And as I loved her not a little, for the love which I judged her to bear towards God and his gospel; so if she be proved culpable, there is not one that loveth God and his gospel that ever will favour her, but must hate her above all other; and the more they favour the gospel, the more they will hate her." This remarkable letter

From a memorial to Cromwell, by George Constantine, giving an account of a conversation which he held in Pembrokeshire.—“ Archæologia,” vol. xxiii.

very clearly indicates the inclination of Anne to a true reform of religion, founded upon the knowledge of the Scriptures; and the influence which she had exercised upon Henry's opinions. As a postscript Cranmer says:"After I had written this letter unto your grace, my lord chancellor, my lord of Oxford, my lord of Sussex, and my lord chamberlain of your grace's house, sent for me to come unto the Star Chamber; and there declared unto me such things as your grace's pleasure was they should make me privy unto. I am exceedingly sorry, that such faults can be proved by the queen, as I heard of their relation." When Cranmer knew nothing of the charge against the queen, he spoke of it as an "offence without mercy to be punished." When the lord chancellor and others have made him privy to such things as the king desired him to know, he is only "exceedingly sorry that such faults can be proved by [of] the queen, as I heard of their relation." If he had heard enough to justify a charge "without mercy to be punished," would he not have used even stronger language than in the first portion of his letter?

On the 10th and 11th of November true bills were found by grand-juries of Middlesex and of Kent, against the queen, her brother, Henry Norris, William Brereton, Francis Weston, and Mark Smeaton, setting forth that the queen had incited them, including lord Rochfort, to commit the most odious crime; that they had at various times compassed and imagined the king's death; and that the king, "having within a short time before become acquainted with the before-mentioned crimes, vices, and treasons, had been so grieved that certain harms and dangers had happened to his royal body." On the 12th of May, the four commoners were tried by a jury at Westminster. They were convicted, and were executed on the 17th. Upon the scaffold they confessed their sins generally, but did not confess to the crimes with which they were accused.

On the 15th of May, a select number of peers assembled in the Tower -twenty-seven in all. The duke of Norfolk presided. The queen was arraigned; and pleaded not guilty. There is no record of the trial; no tittle of the evidence is preserved. The verdict was "Guilty"; the judgment, "to be beheaded or burned at the king's pleasure." The same form was gone through with lord Rochfort; with the usual sentence of death for treason. On the morning of her execution, Anne Boleyn requested Kingston to be present while she received the sacrament, and then declared her "innocency." She had been brought before Cranmer, before her trial, to be examined upon some mysterious point which enabled him to pronounce a sentence of divorce. Burnet says it was in consequence of a pre-contract with the earl of Northumberland. This the earl denied upon oath. When she died for alleged adultery, she was by law proclaimed not to have been the king's wife at all.

Lord Rochfort was executed with the four commoners on the 17th of May. On the 19th, Anne was brought out to die on the Tower-green. She made an address to the bystanders, expressive of the most entire submission to the king's will; took an affectionate leave of her ladies; "and being minded to say no more, she knelt down upon both knees, and one of her ladies covered her eyes with a bandage, and then they withdrew themselves some little space, and knelt down over against the scaffold, bewailing

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HENRY MARRIES JANE SEYMOUR.

193

bitterly, and shedding many tears. And thus, and without more to say or do, was her head stricken off; she making no confession of her fault, and only saying, 'O Lord God, have pity on my soul.'”’* Queen Anne was beheaded on the 19th of May. On the 20th, Henry was married to Jane Seymour. The council exhorted him, we are told, to marry immediately, for a state necessity. We can find no reasonable cause to doubt that from the first step to the last, the charge was got up, the indictments prepared, the juries selected, the peers upon the trial nominated, the marriage with Jane Seymour settled-and last, but not least significant fact, a new parliament called for the sole purpose of making a new law of succession, before the cannon of the Tower had announced that Anne had perished. That parliament met on the 8th of June. We know not the dates of the writs of summons; but it was absolutely impossible that the elections could have taken place, and Peers and Commons have been in their places within eighteen days of the execution of Anne, had not those writs been issued at the same time as the order for a special commission was issued, namely, on the 24th of April.

The bishops and abbots, quaking for fear—the lay lords and commoners, with a scent of spoil-thus got together within three weeks of the appalling events that were probably still imperfectly rumoured in distant parts of the kingdom, were told by Audley, the chancellor, of the great cause of their being unexpectedly summoned. The king desired them to determine as to the succession of the crown; for he knew, confessed the chancellor, that he was "himself obnoxious to infirmities, and even death itself." It was declared that the issue of the marriage with Catherine had been rendered illegitimate by a previous statute, and that, by reason of a divorce pronounced before the execution of the late Lady Anne for treason, her daughter Elizabeth was also illegitimate, that marriage being ": never good nor consonant to the laws." It was therefore enacted that the oath taken to uphold that succession was to be superseded by another oath to maintain the issue of the late marriage with the king's "entirely beloved wife" Queen Jane; and that all who should assert the lawfulness of the issue of the former marriages should be guilty of high treason. It was also enacted that, on failure of issue, the king might limit the descent of the crown, by letters patent, or by his will, to any person in possession or remainder, who shall be obeyed accordingly, whether male or female ? The object of this Act was that Henry might bequeath the crown to his illegitimate son, the duke of Richmond. But the object was defeated by One greater than King, Lords, or Commons. The duke died whilst the bill was passing through parliament.

Mary, the king's first daughter, was now a little more than twenty years of age; Elizabeth was scarcely three years. Mary had incurred the greatest perils by her undaunted refusal to receive the marriage of her mother as unlawful. "For a great while she could not be persuaded to submit to the king; who, being impatient of contradiction from any, but especially from his own child, was resolved to strike a terror in all his people by put

* Letter written from London on the 10th of June, from a Portuguese gentleman to a friend in Lisbon, translated by lord Strangford. "Excerpta Historica," p. 260.

ting her openly to death."* Burnet adds, that Cranmer induced the king to relax from this atrocious resolve. But the princess was kept from court and lived in great seclusion. The removal of Anne was considered an opportunity for the lady Mary again to approach her stern father. Cromwell appears to have been solicitous to effect a reconciliation; and partly by his threats, and partly by his entreaties, the unhappy woman was led to make a complete renunciation of all her former opinions-to accept the king as the Supreme Head of the Church; to "utterly refuse the bishop of Rome's pretended authority, power, and jurisdiction within this realm;" and to recognise the marriage of her mother with the king as unlawful, by God's law and man's law.

CHAPTER XV.

IRELAND, at this period of the reign of Henry VIII., exhibited a condition of society of which there was no parallel in the Europe that had emerged from barbarism. The English Pale, to which all early notices of Ireland refer, anciently comprised all the eastern coast from Dundalk bay to Waterford harbour, extending some fifty or sixty miles inland. The term "pale" is thus explained: "When Ireland was subdued by the English, divers of the conquerors planted themselves near to Dublin, and the confines thereto adjoining; and so, as it were, inclosing and impaling themselves within certain lists and territories, they feared away the Irish, insomuch as that country became mere English, and thereof it was termed the English pale."+ In 1515, the pale was so reduced in its extent, that a line drawn from Dundalk to Kells, from Kells to Maynooth, from Maynooth to Kilcullen, and then towards Dublin, under the Wicklow mountains, would comprise all the English pale from the sea. There were sixty regions not included in the pale, governed by chief captains, calling themselves kings, princes, dukes, or arch-dukes; obeying no law but that of force; their very successions depending upon the strongest arm and the hardest sword. "In every of the said regions there be divers petty captains, and every one of them maketh war and peace for himself." There were also "thirty great captains of English noble folk, that followeth the same Irish order, and keepeth the same rule, and every of them maketh war and peace for himself "-the Desmonds, Fitzgeralds, and Fitzmaurices, the Butlers, Dillons, and Delameres. In the few districts subject to the king's writs-those within the pale-the people were so oppressed by the courts of law, that they were glad to abandon their freeholds for ever. In the marches, not subject to the king's law, they were as much oppressed by individual extortion. The deputy and his council were extortioners. The Church was wholly abandoned to hire; none preaching or teaching but

Burnet, "History of the Reformation," part ii., book ii. + Stanihurst, in Holinshed, p. 10, ed. 1586.